Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime. - Martin Luther
- Do you believe in the resurrection?
- Yes.
- Well, then, can you explain it to me?
- ...
What happened on Easter morning is hard to explain - but it changed absolutely everything.
What we do with what happened - how we change our minds and let our lives be turned around in a new direction - more profoundly tells the meaning of the resurrection than any formula.
From that day forward - from that day forward to this one - life is changed. Not ended.
As we say of the hour of death life is changed, not ended: meaning that death has not the final word, the finality, any more - for Christ is raised, from the dead, and in him, in his raising, all are raised.
With him we are living into a new future - the new possibility that life can have meaning beyond itself, beyond the grave, beyond our circumstances, beyond our individuality; we have life in Christ and in Christ's life we find life.
We know we are going home - for the first time - to a place we have never been; we will dwell forever in the presence of God.
Nobody knows what this means - nobody can witness to it. We only know of it because of the witness to the resurrection by the women and the men who beheld the empty tomb, the risen Lord, and the Ascension - and the coming of the holy Spirit down upon them.
We too wish for the descent of the dove, the power of the Spirit; knowing full well it has meaning beyond our dreams, holds out hope beyond our accomplishment, and fills us with love beyond our capacity for self doubt or remorse, anguish or uncertainty.
Claims on life as we lived it once before are gone; as we live into the resurrection we let go of life - and truly grasp it at last.
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Living Easter Through the Year, by John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford (SPCK, 2005)
JRL+
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